


call me friend, but keep me closer

by jeannedarc



Series: phase one: waxing [1]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Consensual Underage Sex, Crime Scenes, M/M, Prequel, Recreational Drug Use, Theft, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:07:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22111573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeannedarc/pseuds/jeannedarc
Summary: Jaehyun is sixteen, and hates his parents, his friends, and essentially everyone around him. Doyoung just so happens to know the solution to the rich teenage boy blues.
Relationships: Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun/Kim Dongyoung | Doyoung
Series: phase one: waxing [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1591630
Comments: 14
Kudos: 56





	call me friend, but keep me closer

**Author's Note:**

> hello~  
> please mind the tags and take good care of yourself  
> you are loved
> 
> thank you to maddie, as always, for being the best beta a fool like me could have, and for encouraging me  
> thanks to mel and em and elle in particular for holding my hand through this  
> thanks to everyone who liked the original idea of this enough to want more  
> you are so important to me
> 
> for those of you who don't know, this is a collective prequel to "in the hushing dusk, under a swollen silver moon". you absolutely don't have to read that to read this, buuuut the connection will exist at some point. thank you 💕

Jaehyun's mother has always been a fan of the written invitation. It's evident in the notes she leaves at her son's bedside, glossy and with a single fingerprint where she holds them down at the corner. He can see her sitting at her father’s antique writing desk, careful with her calligraphy, her hair tucked into a bun as she writes this invitation in which her son has absolutely no interest -- always a fan of the passive-aggressive. Here he is, sixteen and barely able to get himself up in time for class, let alone make it to track practise on time, and she expects him to schedule his time with friends around her ridiculous parties.

He stares at the note in her perfect, scrawling script, and hopes to hell it catches fire and blows away in the perfectly temperature-controlled air blowing through the ducts.

He hates his parents.

This is, of course, not an uncommon sentiment; most sixteen year olds are given to this sort of drama, almost as a given, the feeling trapped between study sessions to get into whatever prestigious university their parents plan on sending them to, endless extracurriculars, social events where they meet with future employers. He manages not to feel cliché, though the thought occurs to him, a flash of lightning that dampens the bright day, the bar of sunlight streaming in through his bamboo-shuttered bedroom window.

At least, that's what tender young Jaehyun thinks, as he chews on his bottom lip, catches sight of his awkward reflection in the full-length mirror across the room.

He takes up the card, reads the date and time. He has a track meet on that day. He's always been good at running, though his coaches are always pushing him to do better, be better. Not once has Jaehyun Jung stopped to ask himself what it is he needs to be better at. 

Already he's got his phone out, and is considering composing a scathing answer to a question not technically asked of him. But then, like a flash, the fight drains from him. What's the point, when the expectation is already there?

Next time, he'll refuse. This time, he'll at least have the stones to show up late.

The save-the-date, two weeks out, ends up on the floor, kicked beneath his nightstand. Jaehyun likes to think it's a metaphor for whatever dreams he could have but isn't permitted.

He stalks down to his father's office, where he can't be found, and lays on the floor, staring up into the sky through the French doors. In this moment, he can't possibly imagine something harder than being himself.

Somewhere deep in the house -- a manse, by all accounts and definitions -- he hears the sound of a vacuum cleaner stirring to life. He closes his eyes, imagines it's a plane taking off, and wonders the destination he'll find.

///

His mother, for the record, is disappointed when he does finally show his face at her fundraiser for the local firefighting department. "Darling," she says, face sour with the downturn of her lipsticked mouth, which kisses both his cheeks despite his very audible protests. "You smell of sweat. Have you been running again?"

He shouldn't expect her to know, because she never knows these things. His driver is more often present at his sporting events than his parents have ever been. He drags his palm over his face, trying to rid himself of traces of makeup the likes of which he only wears when she isn't around. "I had a track meet," he explains, lamely, the fire inside him dying out in the harsh winter wind of his mother's voice.

"Please go to your room and get changed," his mother says, avoiding conflict by way of not asking him a single thing.

Grateful for reprieve, Jaehyun climbs the left side of the double spiral staircase, disappears into his bedroom, shuts the door a little more quietly than he'd like.

His walls are plastered with posters that were chosen for him, professionally framed but personally hung. Every single person in the photographs is a winner in their field, some accomplished someone of whom he doesn't bother knowing the name. He speaks to them, sometimes, in his loneliest hours. Tonight they watch him as he shucks himself of his sweats, his t-shirt, the windbreaker with the price tag still on it. Naked, he crosses the bedroom, disappears into the bathroom attached just beside his closet door.

It is beneath the spray that he considers not going back downstairs at all. His father is sure to be chatting it up on the patio, a fat cigar between his nimble fingers; his mother is sure to be holding the clippers meant to trim them. They're all going to be talking about business, and they'll all laugh like it's something droll when Jaehyun voices his opinion on anything.

More than he hates his parents, Jaehyun hates his parents' parties, and the way their friends look at him like he doesn't know anything.

Only after long deliberation does he pull his dress shirt over his shoulders and cinch his tie the way his mother likes best. It's with a heavy heart that he descends the stairs again. The main event must be happening; the grand foyer streams down moonlight over the mostly-empty marble flooring. He trips on the expensive rug on his way out to the backyard.

There, his mother is toasting the fire department. It doesn't matter the words she's saying so much as the fact that she's speaking at all. Her voice grates on what little nerve he has reserved for occasions such as these. He hangs back in the doorway, amidst the throng of people listening to her while watching the subtle movement of her shoulders.

Though he knows he should expect someone beside him, caught between bodies that smell of self-care and untold fortunes, what he does not expect is someone who appears to be his own age. "Does she write this shit herself?" asks the rather sly voice of a complete stranger, and Jaehyun cocks his head to see the source of the mouth curling on his very own sentiments.

"No, I'm pretty sure she asks our housekeeper and corrects the grammatical errors after," Jaehyun replies easily, as if his own thoughts are just as canned as his mother's sentiments about _the brave individuals who serve our community and provide us with an invaluable and incalculable service_. "I think she has a thesaurus at her bedside right next to her bible. You can guess which one gets read more often."

The other boy snorts out a laugh, and Jaehyun takes a moment to truly appreciate him, the wild streak of indigo that runs through his hair, the slight rumple of his suit, the crookedness of his bow tie. "Doyoung Kim," says the boy, offering his hand, which Jaehyun eyes with suspicion. "Oh, come on, you know they basically breed this into us."

Jaehyun must admit the kernel of truth to that, though it makes his skin crawl. He takes Doyoung's hand in his, and notes it's rougher than those he's shaken. "Jaehyun," he says at last, by way of introduction, words lagging behind just as his motivation does. "Sorry about my mom. She's just..."

"Dramatic? It's fine, if you didn't take after her." Doyoung's grinning again, though his eyes shine with negative light, as if he's comprised entirely of dark matter and doesn't have any place in this particular sect of the galaxy. "You don't, do you?"

"Not that I know of," Jaehyun practically singsongs, inching to his left so Doyoung can take up more space at his right, should he so choose. "It's fine, I don't need to take after either of them to know what their deal is."

"What's their deal?" And it's banter at best, not a real conversation, but Jaehyun's friends are the sort that pretend to include him in deep conversation and act as if they want him around, like they don't mutter the word 'chink' under their breath when they think he can't hear. Doyoung's the most interesting person he's spoken to in awhile.

It's sad, that, he realises as he opens his mouth to speak without his own permission. "They like pretending they're important because no one else thinks they are." He sniffs. "Everyone here with money has it from the old school, not this new school, not self-made money, you know? Except maybe you. Where's your parents' money from?" He quirks an eyebrow.

Doyoung sours in a way that makes Jaehyun want to sink between the cracks in the floor. "It doesn't matter if it's from here, or there, or anywhere else," he says in this incredibly definitive way, eyes narrowing, "because it's not mine, you know? We aren't our parents."

Jaehyun, for the record, has never considered this, the money simply implied when he gives his name. "Alright, well, where do you go to school? I've never seen you before."

"I go to public school." Jaehyun fights the urge to gasp; his mother would be scandalised. "I wanted to, you know? It's better than being the odd one out surrounded by a bunch of rich white fucks who don't care about you."

It stings more than it should, even if Doyoung has a point. "Hey, do you want to get out of here?" he asks softly, because he can't think of anyplace he wants to be _less_ than he does right here, right now. "I-- shit, that sounds like I'm asking you out. I'm not."

"Where did you have in mind?" Doyoung, unflappable except in the face of too-forward questions, reaches out and takes Jaehyun by the elbow. "And for the record, I'd only date you if it'd piss off your parents."

Jaehyun has to laugh at that, and together the pair of them waltz away, out the front door, into the chill of the night air, Jaehyun ignoring the bite of wind that gnaws where his mother's mouth had been not too long ago.

///

Prone to hyperfixation, Jaehyun quickly makes it his mission to become Doyoung's best friend. It's harder, considering the fact that they only get to see one another after school, between meets, on the weekends when Doyoung doesn't have extensive, expensive tutoring sessions his parents have demanded of him, but then, Jaehyun's never shied away from a challenge. He meticulously plans what little free time he's allowed around his friend, and when they can't see each other he's the pest, triple-texting and checking in.

For what it's worth, Doyoung isn't necessarily a reluctant party to all this. He's always responsive, as if he's desperate to get out of whatever it is he's actually doing, and always had some fairly astute observation or another to offer. He also manages to get invited to a lot of parties, something that astounds Jaehyun when he recalls Doyoung's self-profession of being asocial on their first night together.

_Rager Friday night. Your driver got us?_ Attached is always an address. Jaehyun goes to whatever he can that doesn't interfere with track, and the baseball season is picking up too, and finals are coming soon so most of his Saturday afternoons are spoken for. He still does his best, sneaks away, shows up later than even the host themselves, gets drunker than anyone, his head usually pillowed on Doyoung's shoulder while they trade quips about their parents, about their peers, about the party at which they're currently losing themselves.

By the end of the year they're inseparable.

Jaehyun begs to transfer for his last year. His parents, in their outrage, try to ban Doyoung from the house, only to find that Jaehyun is smarter, sneakier than he lets on. More often than not their rules end up circumvented. One might think this would lead to a loss of privilege, but Jaehyun doesn't have a life outside schoolwork and sports and study sessions that last days on end, and so they quickly run out of things to take from him.

"What will you do," says Jaehyun in the midst of one of his newfound knockdown dragouts, his favourite vice, better than drinking, better than the pot with which Doyoung's friends supply him, "take away my legacy? You'd rather die than not be able to tell your friends you sent me to the same school Dad went to."

His mother, aghast, clutches at the hem of her mohair sweater. "I don't know what's gotten into you," she tells him, visibly fighting tears.

_Good,_ he thinks, watching them dribble down her face, her mascara tracking down her cheeks like some roadkill dragged across the asphalt by a secondary passing car. "I'm just _tired_ , Mom," he says at last. "I'm tired of always having to be the best at everything, which means I have to do three times as well as anyone else in my class. I'm tired of not having a life. You know all my friends are fucking racist?"

"Don't take that tack with me, young man, I won't tolerate that langu--"

"They are. They don't even realise it half the time. Do you know how exhausting that is?"

And the look in his mother's eyes tells her that she does. Her chin wobbles, and she bursts into a fresh wave of tears. "Just you wait until your father hears about this."

Jaehyun shrugs. "What's he going to do, not listen to me either?"

He's out the back door and in the backyard before she can continue the conversation. He's running. Always good at running, Jaehyun Jung. In the distance, somewhere behind him, he can hear his mother's protests, but he simply isn't listening.

When he's safely at the back fence, Jaehyun plucks his phone from the pocket of his sweats. _Is there a party tonight?_

The dots indicative of typing are right there immediately. It's only Thursday, but Doyoung's a magician, knows everything about everything in this tiny, affluent city, can procure what someone needs if only they've got the balls to ask for it.

It is good, he thinks as he looks up directions in his GPS, to have friends.

///

They're wandering home from some engagement or another, arm in arm, joking in one another's ears as best friends are wont to do when Doyoung just comes right out and says it. "What do you do to feel alive, Jaehyun?" There's something misty about his eyes that speaks more to the question than to the cheap liquor they'd spent the whole night drinking.

Jaehyun, caught off-guard, doesn't have an answer to this right away. "I run," he says after a long while, wobbling toward Doyoung, his knees threatening to give out beneath him. "I run because it's the only thing that makes me feel as if I have control over anything." He skips a beat. "What do you do?"

"Well, you see," and Doyoung's got that tight-lipped smirk he only wears when he knows he's about to say something clever, "I used to sleep around, but rich boys don't really like it when they try to fight over you at their parents' galas. And for a while I used to set things on fire, because I like destruction. But now... now I have an idea."

"What idea?" Jaehyun dares to ask, albeit hesitantly.

"What if I just stole a bunch of things," Doyoung answers, and his words fill the open air between them as they turn down an alleyway that led to their favourite late-night pizza place, the only establishment in which they could safely sober up at their tender ages. "I mean, it's not like my parents wouldn't do anything to keep things off my record. They've been paying off my brother's DWIs for years, and never once said a word against him."

Jaehyun shrugs here. "What if you did?"

"What if you did it with me? You're already a fast runner. You can't drive yet--"

"I can drive!" Jaehyun huffs.

"You can't _legally_ drive yet, but no one can stop you on foot. You're already the best on the track and baseball teams. What if you just did it?"

"And what about you?" Jaehyun questions, tipping his head, a long strand of his dyed-pink hair catching on the brick just beside him. Doyoung, though, just rolled his eyes and held the door open for Jaehyun, who entered first.

Inside, their pizza parlour is warm. They take a seat at their usual table, away from the window, careful of the wobble that threatens to take their place right out from under their balancing elbows. Doyoung sips at the glass of water brought him by their usual waitress, old habits being hard to break and all that. Funny how he seems a lot less wild in front of people than when it's just Jaehyun around. "I've thought about it. I can't run like you can, but there's things I can do. If you want to do them. If you want both of us to do them, I guess I should say."

There's something so adult about Doyoung in this moment that Jaehyun, sipping on a Coke and hearing his mother's shrewing in the back of his mind, telling him how horrible it is for him. "I don't know what I want, Doyoung," he says at last. "I never do."

Doyoung frowns, and it's a notable change from the smug self he'd been outside. "You know you want to spend time with me. You know you want to stick it to your parents' legacy. What better way is there than petty crime?"

It almost seems too easy: Jaehyun wants a way out, would carve it from the sky himself if he had that sort of power, and Doyoung's just going to offer it to him on a silver platter. Like anything happens like that. Perhaps, thinks Jaehyun, struggling against the idea of his parents who give him nothing, his friends who do nothing for him but take -- perhaps some things do, if he makes them happen.

He glances out the window, and when his eyes turn back to his friend, there is a fire that wasn’t there before. Jaehyun finds himself reminded of the fires Doyoung sets to feel joy, sorrow, anything at all. And he shrugs. “I guess there isn’t a better one.”

Doyoung tucks his hands beneath his chin, all threaded fingers and grinning so big it threatens to split his face in two. “There _isn’t_ ,” he agrees easily, and nudges Jaehyun’s knee with his own under the table. “I’m glad you think so. Even if you don’t want to do it…” And here something in him softens, just a fraction, emotion talking over ambition. “It means a lot to me that you think so, too.”

They’re served their slices -- Doyoung abiding the rules set for him despite all his efforts at bravado, abstaining from meat; Jaehyun getting the most of it he possibly can -- and they eat in relative quiet, the sun beginning to crest over the buildings surrounding their little hovel, the place in which they take comfort, more home than their own bedrooms. “I might do it,” Jaehyun finally says, when their conversation grinds to an eventual halt. “I don’t know right now. But it’d be good practise, in the off-season.”

And Doyoung just _knows_. He’s probably known the entire time, since he brought it up, since before the morning had shown its pretty face, and since before the ice melted, and since they met all those months ago -- that Jaehyun couldn’t say no to something that even resembled a challenge.

“We’ll make a plan,” is all he says, gently rejecting his crust. It rattles around the plate as the waitress carries it away.

Eventually they leave, arms wrapped around one another, the couple to beat in last night’s closed, someone else’s eyeliner, somewhere else’s thoughts on their mind. They walk the streets like they’ve slept, like they don’t need anything, like Jaehyun doesn’t have church to go to in a couple hours and Doyoung doesn’t have a mound of tutoring homework to get back to. “Pick a place,” Jaehyun tells Doyoung. “I’ll do it. We’ll do it.” And though they aren’t those types of friends, and Jaehyun knows the kind of danger that gets his best friend going, he leans in, kisses Doyoung on the cheek, when they finally part.

It’s easy, he finds, to watch something burn up right in front of you, and even easier to pretend that it isn’t happening.

///

Their first gig is an easy one, amateur even by Jaehyun’s inexperienced standards. Go in. Take something. Go out. Don’t get caught. Run like hell. Doyoung’s got one of the cars from his parents’ garage, the one that isn’t in his name, engine warmed and ready in the parking lot. He doesn’t have his license yet. It probably doesn’t matter, in the grand scheme of things, they being moneyed young men who subsist on the validation of one another and their parents' money. Doyoung’s as good a driver as Jaehyun is a runner, would have trophies with his name engraved, collecting dust in professionally-lit cases, in the same way as Jaehyun does if he could compete, or if things that run underground had something like awards that weren’t pink slips.

He'd do well, in competition, with the fierce determination of his smile, the way he never lets Jaehyun get a word in edgewise when he thinks he has a point. Jaehyun has to admit this, at the very least. It's the thought that keeps him warm late at night, when Doyoung's gone to sleep, and Jaehyun only has his parents' deafening silence, louder than any lack of support they've ever given him, to keep him company into the wee hours.

Doyoung grips tight at the steering wheel. He's wearing gloves. _Who the fuck wears gloves?_ thinks Jaehyun, reminded only of his driver, of how it's part of the uniform, how silly they look with a long-sleeved thermal tee versus the polished link buttons and starched cuffs. "What do you think it'll be?" he asks Jaehyun, who's sitting there, seat all the way back, legs sprawled out, staring out the window with his temple to the glass. They're in the back of the lot, and there aren't a lot of people milling about here, but it's a holiday weekend and the cars, at least, stretch this direction. He can hear the screams of happy children, probably promised fireworks, definitely fed too much sugar.

He's thinking. Doyoung must sense it, because he reaches into the space between them, and rests the tips of his leathered fingers on Jaehyun's knee. "It's okay, if you don't want to."

And Jaehyun, well, he doesn't, but there's that electric charge to Doyoung's touch, and yeah, he has to. It's not okay. Especially not when Doyoung speaks so softly that Jaehyun can barely hear him over the murmured din of conversation that seems to surround them on all sides. "I'll do it. I told you I'd do it, didn't I?" And his tone is so sharp that even Doyoung, unafraid of anything, always with that brave face like Jaehyun doesn't know about the two AM breakdowns and Doyoung's favourite method of transportation, flinches away. "Sorry. It's fine. I'll do it. Just. Stay here."

And then he pushes out of the car, into the throngs, a normal kid in a normal parking lot for a normal store. If anyone sees him more than sees through him, he doesn't pretend it matters to him.

The benefits of a small town are this: people know him, but not well. Stores lock up their inventory, but not well. Employees are paid, but not enough to care about what their bosses tell them to, and that's the critical part of it, isn't it? He slips between bodies, warm and inviting, remembering the touch of someone who hasn't held him in years, since childhood, perhaps since birth. The chatter gives him focus.

His eyes turn eagle, and he searches not shelves, but shopping carts, and when he finds his target he's quick-moving -- a gaming system, even here, months after Christmas but still on someone's wishlist; he thinks of birthdays forgotten as he slides his fingers into a distracted housewife's basket, takes whatever he thinks he can.

It'd be silly, to just walk out with his smile plastered on and his find tucked between his palms or, worse yet, hugging it to his chest like a child might hold a plush. But that's precisely why he does it that way, rushing past the security gate, breaking into a run when the shouting begins.

No one's ever been able to catch him. No one does, not today.

Doyoung is waiting for him, not in the same spot, a lot closer, just a few rows back but off to the side now, and when he slips into the car they zoom out of the still-full lot, tires squealing and a crowd of people clustered at the entrance. Jaehyun watches the entire establishment disappear, dots in the distance, and breaks into a laugh that doesn't feel like anything at all.

Once they're far out past the limits of their small town, greeted by nothing but sprawling countryside and parked in the drive of an abandoned, ramshackle house, Jaehyun's pulse calms down. Doyoung eyes him sideways, head tipped toward the window. "I can't believe you just did that." He's sparkling with admiration.

And Jaehyun, for an answer, leans into the driver's seat, fingers fisted in the collar of Doyoung's shirt when he takes a kiss without asking.

Doyoung, for what it's worth, doesn't push him away, and beneath his bloodless knuckles, Jaehyun can feel the adrenaline pulsing in his chest, his uneven breathing, the way he slips in, something incorporeal and incredible.

///

"They have you on _camera_ ," Jaehyun's mother is saying, though his ears aren't truly listening, the matter between them reflective as the jewelry she wears to even the most banal of conversations. "They're threatening to _prosecute_. Do you have any idea what you've _done_?"

He hadn't asked for a conversation, much less an intervention. He just wants her to sign the permission slip so he can quit track and field. Now she's clutching at her necklace like it means something, like she doesn't realise she looks like one of those cheesy film stars she claims to hate so much.

In the end, when at last he escapes from whatever good intentions his mother has by forcing him into this conversation, Jaehyun forges her signature in bright-red ink, reminiscent of the blood he'd promised her when agreeing to her stupid legacies, the blood they don't share, the blood that had tingled on the tip of his tongue when Doyoung had last kissed him, splitting his lip with sharp and unforgiving teeth. Her opinion doesn't matter. Nothing matters. He's doing things that make him feel alive, and he's not sure he's ever felt that until just recently.

///

It isn't his parents who take him to his driver's test, but rather Doyoung, and his driver, both of whom are better accompaniment than his father might have been anyhow. Anxiety holds tight round his throat, the way it always does when he has someone to whom he must prove himself, but Doyoung holds tighter, fingers threaded through his, strangely soft and cast in the warm, buttery light of a late-fall afternoon when he catches Jaehyun’s eye.

He passes with flying colours. He is seventeen years old, has his entire future ahead of him, and even the driver swells with pride when he slips back into his paid seat, never once giving Jaehyun the opportunity to do the thing he's just proven, on a professional level, lest he endanger more property or pride of his parents'.

When the exam proctor pronounces him road-ready, and he is handed a slip of paper with a grainy photograph of his beaming face, Doyoung is there. They link elbows as they lean against the laminate counter, grinning huge and happy, _truly_ happy, the sort that doesn't come tangled in the strings of rebellion but rather outside that particular cat’s cradle.

This is, Jaehyun will realise later as he tongues over a still-healing bottom lip in a fit of nostalgia, one of the most pure feelings they've shared.

They celebrate by going to Doyoung's house for the very first time. It's a humble abode by comparison, no sweeping foyers or double staircases or kitchens big enough to house a family on their own. One of those model homes. New money, Jaehyun is reminded, though the distinction hasn't mattered much to him recently. Not with friends like the one he does.

His mother is there, clattering in the background; the air smells of garlic and vinegar and all the comforts Jaehyun's been aware of, tangentially, but never experienced himself. He almost lets his nose lead him that direction, but Doyoung takes him by the elbow at the last second, and Jaehyun is dragged away. "Don't bother with her," he mumbles, and there's the taste of something unfamiliar in his tone, something that Jaehyun only knows one word for: shame.

The house, a one-story, is expansive; the maze of rooms seems to go on forever, Jaehyun trapped in that space that doesn't have a name where he doesn't yet know things but is eager to learn. Doyoung's bedroom is the only one he sees; everything else is closed doors, privacy. He wonders what that must be like, to have parents who'll let you close doors like you've something to hide when really, you're just hiding from their secrets, their judgments, their expectations, even when they're supposed to mean the world to you.

In a way, though he's freshly licensed, a new adult, Jaehyun is jealous.

As soon as Doyoung's bedroom door closes behind them, Jaehyun finds himself pressed against it, and those cold fingers twined in his hair, frigid pinpricks rising on his scalp wherever he's touched. Despite his poor circulation, Doyoung's mouth is burning hot when it presses to the column of Jaehyun's throat, and though he doesn't remember this part of the arrangement, the part where he gets hard because his best friend wants to reward him, he can't imagine a world in which he might say no.

This is what he thinks as they rut uselessly against one another, truly high school kids too excited to get out of their clothes.

///

The thievery escalates, though it's stupid of him to encourage it. In time, televisions aren't enough, wheeled out in broken shopping carts that squeal when Jaehyun pushes them through those damned security gates. The gates make their siren call to whatever pathetic excuse for security is in this store or that one, and Jaehyun -- well, Jaehyun keeps running.

Every store in town knows who they are; they start taking weekend jaunts, casing new joints, drawing up maps from memory and photographs found on the internet. They take note of security measures taken, and in time they're canvassing an entire tri-county area with their childish crimes.

Jaehyun's parents, having noticed, don't say much of anything about it. He wonders what their bank accounts look like, paying off cops that are more than likely investigating their son in his quest to become a master thief.

Still, he can't help the way his blood sings when he shoves into Doyoung's car, more stolen goods in his arms, he clinging to the packaging like it's the only thing that'll ever make him happy. Perhaps, in a twisted way, it is.

Well, that, and the way Doyoung looks when it's two in the morning and they're not breaking down but for one another, hands wrapped around each other's lengths as they go through the tedious process of learning someone else's body as well as they know their own.

It is, in practise, the best thing that's ever happened to Jaehyun. But in theory it's a mess.

"We need to talk," his father says, serious, intruding on what little privacy a door affords him on a rare night in which Jaehyun is actually home. He sits at Jaehyun's desk, ramrod straight, questions dancing in his eyes, fear in the gentle quibbling of his weak chin. "Listen, son, I know you're probably going through something with that boy. I know that you've been spending a lot of time with him lately, and that he doesn't come from a family of--" He struggles with the words, on this one, unsure as to whether or not prudence comes into play. "Of means like ours," he finishes at last. "And that's fine. I've always wanted you to go where you felt most comfortable."

Jaehyun, laying in bed and staring at the ceiling with the focus and intensity that most might read a novel they find interesting, shakes with laughter at the thought. His father? Wanting friends for him? Absurd. Still, he says nothing, knows this isn't his time.

"Your mother..." Dad tries again, though it's not to his advantage to do so. "Your mother can't take much more of this. _I_ can't take much more of this. I don't know what we'd do if you actually got caught red-handed."

"Why are you here, Dad?" he asks after a slow, uneasy silence settles over them. "Besides to tell me what Mom doesn't feel like telling me herself."

"I'm here to tell you that you could get in a lot of trouble, once you finally turn eighteen." His father's frustration baffles the both of them; he hadn't been sure they'd both taken notice like this, in a way that's emotional rather than monetary. "And I'm here to tell you that I'll probably have to turn you loose, once you get to be that old, and that I don't want to do that. You didn't get any scholarships since you dropped track, since you dropped baseball--"

"Because I didn't like it," Jaehyun complains, and now he's sitting up, propped on his elbows, glaring at his father like it's somehow _his_ fault that no one on the track team could best him. "Because it wasn't making me happy, and because everything the two of you want me to do has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with you."

"I know, son." Here, his father crosses his legs, one over the other, ankle to knee. "I know. And that's our fault. We should have asked you what you wanted, and guessed that your tastes would change over the years." That part comes with pronounced bitterness, on both their parts. Jaehyun has never guessed that they'd recognised a change in him before the shoplifting. "Put you in other things. Encouraged you to try things you'd never tried before."

He certainly doesn't know what to do with this admission of guilt. It tastes horrible, a pill dissolved under his tongue that isn't meant to do so, crunched into by too-sharp teeth that want too much.

Still, he thinks of Doyoung's kisses and, convinced that this is the only way to earn that approval, knows he must keep going, that things must get bigger and better for him to stay with the only person who's never othered him, never demanded anything of him save attention and the occasional party.

"It's fine, Dad," he half-lies, wanting to weep. "I'll stop."

And goodness, but does his father's face light up, something like a holiday.

"If," he adds after a pause that lasts a beat too long, "you promise me you won't turn me in for everything I've already done."

"That's fine. We've taken care of it. You're pretty lucky you have us, son."

Jaehyun smiles. Perhaps, in a sense, he is.

///

He doesn't stop, despite his words of promise. He can already see the disappointment in his father's eyes as he and Doyoung look up, on a private connection, how to break into and hotwire cars. These guides meant for people in emergency situations are surprisingly detailed. Doyoung takes notes. Jaehyun imagines the rush he'll get from stealing a car, and what Doyoung will think of him once they've pulled it off.

It is, to him, all that matters in the world.

They go a few towns over, almost to the state line, to a place where no one makes enough money to afford either of their houses, but everyone's got a vehicle that's new to them, if not brand new outright. The Christmas lights, up early this year, twinkle on the horizon as they cut through a neighbourhood on foot. No trail. No lights. Just two boys out for a walk. Unrecognisable. They've mastered the art of being incognito, have come so far from petty theft and ostentatious getaway vehicles -- and besides, they'll be getting their own ride tonight.

As it happens, what they select for their first time together is a Lexus -- older and well cared for, sleek and beautiful and certainly out of range of everyone else in the neighbourhood. Must belong to an aficionado, Jaehyun decides with his bottom lip caught between his teeth. It's an impressive piece of modern materialism, to be sure, though not one Jaehyun pegs as the sort to be carrying the middle class back and forth to work. Not that he's an expert on anything that poorer folk do.

Doyoung, though, marvels at the sight of it, freshly washed, not a crack, ding or dent on its frame. "It's beautiful," he breathes, barely above a whisper, breath fogging up the air.

They get to it, a crowbar in the window track, and they get the door open like that -- through teamwork, and the patience it takes not to break anything. The alarm doesn't go off. That should be the first sign. The interior, custom leather with a pattern the likes of which Jaehyun couldn't have predicted through the tinted glass, is clean, newly vacuumed, not a speck of personality to it. He wonders, for a moment as he's breaking into the steering column, his nimble fingers working through wires that he'd practised and practised before they'd come here, if someone actually owns the vehicle.

A second sign in the form of a child running out into the street as snow begins to fall. They should go. Jaehyun's heart leaps into his throat at the sound of high-pitched shrieks of excitement; he reaches over the console, fingertips to the inner crease of Doyoung's elbow.

Doyoung, though, just shrinks away from the touch, and it's something off, but not something worth questioning right now when they're in the middle of a job.

The third and final sign is when the porch light clicks on over the front door of the people they're essentially robbing. "Shit, Jaehyun, they know we're here," Doyoung hisses, ducking his head as Jaehyun does the same, bonking his brow hard on the bottom rung of the steering wheel. He's almost done, just needs to dig his mother's craft wire cutters from his pocket, when--

There's a knock on the window, a thoroughly unimpressed man dressed in what look like flannel pyjamas peering down at Jaehyun, who must blink up at him like a deer in the headlights.

At a loss for what else to do -- the man doesn't look angry, just tired, and though it's probably stupid to do so, he takes comfort in the fact that he probably isn't about to be shot -- Jaehyun opens the door to talk.

"What in the absolute fuck," asks the man, "are you doing with my friend's car?"

Doyoung, from the corner of Jaehyun's eye, looks ready to fling the door open and run, all tense limbs and darting glances accompanied by frantic head-bobbing that makes him look more bird than human. The man, in all his heavy exhaustion, must also notice this, because he very sternly says, "Don't you fucking dare go anywhere."

Jaehyun stammers out, "W-we just wanted to go for a ride, sir, really, that's all it was--"

"You know this model's too new for that," says the man, "and that the steering column is locked now you've messed with all the wires."

In fact, Jaehyun did not know this, and still isn't quite processing the fact that the jig is up. He falters when it comes to the right words, and all he can hear is his father telling him again, again, again -- _you could get in a lot of trouble_.

This man, though, just cracks the biggest grin. "Amateurs," he says in a tone that's almost sly. "Come inside. We'll get Johnny to fix this right up, as soon as he's awake from his nap."

What? Jaehyun blinks, mouth forming the word but never quite making it. The snow has started to come down harder; it enters the car in enormous, fluffy flakes that threaten the custom leather on which two shaking, frightened teenagers are sitting. "I..."

"Stop talking or I'll have to call a lawyer," says the man, rolling his eyes and turning tail back into the house. "If you're not inside in five minutes I'm calling the cops."

Though he doesn't know it, he will later find this absolutely hilarious.

"We shouldn't go inside," insists Doyoung, though his voice quavers with the uncertainty of it. He's reached into the space between them, returned touch where it'd been rebuffed previously, and Jaehyun's the one to pull away this time, something acid in the way Doyoung's hands feel on him even through layers of clothing. "It's stupid. Who just catches someone stealing their car and is like, _hey, come on in_?" There's a hysterical edge to him, his eyes wide, and for the second time Jaehyun catches a whiff of that shame he'd felt Doyoung experiencing when he'd visited his home for the first -- the only -- time.

"I don't know, but he said he'd call the cops, and no one around here knows who we are, and..." Jaehyun's words come like a hurricane, all at once until there's silence. His thoughts rush and his adrenaline pulses and he wants, he wants, he _wants_ to be out of this situation, however it might happen. "Listen. I know they might have guns, or knives, or fuckin' -- fuckin' guns that shoot knives or something, but whatever they have, they've seen our faces, and they know what we look like, and I really, _really_ can't have the cops taking me home, not after--"

And it occurs to him, all too late, that he hasn't told Doyoung about that conversation with his father, weeks ago, and that he might have been discouraged from attempt grand theft auto if Doyoung had known.

"Just, just-- finish what you were doing, take the car," Doyoung implores, eyes all big and needful. "Please."

But Jaehyun doesn't, and when he climbs from the car, taking all the knowledge of the actual theft with him, Doyoung has no choice but to follow. It's the first time in their entire friendship that Jaehyun has felt so knowledgeable, and though he thinks he can feel the wedge, the burning stare of his best friend, his sort-of lover on the back of his neck, there's no way for him to determine what it means. Not now, not when the tension is so high he swears he breathes it in like he does the cold.

The door is still open when he approaches. He holds his hands in front of his face, breathing heavier to get the feeling back into his fingers. The heat inside that cursed home cups his cheeks, puts a life in him he didn’t think he could feel after it drained from him in a moment of sheer, unadulterated panic. There’s noise coming from inside. Conversation. A low, soothing voice. The smell of pot and hot chocolate and the staunch stink of burned coffee filling the air -- a horrible combination, not that he’s in much of a position to be critical. His nose still burns with cold, and he glances over his shoulder, Orpheus to Eurydice, finding that he cares less and less if Doyoung disappears.

The door clicks shut behind them, Doyoung’s doing, and Jaehyun knows they’re stuck in whatever this situation turns out to be. Though he isn’t afraid, something deep down points out that, perhaps, he should be.

That soothing voice raises, just a hair, contention clear in words Jaehyun can’t hear, and the back of Jaehyun’s neck pricks with sweat. He and Doyoung unwind their scarves, tuck their shucked gloves into their jacket pockets. They follow along to the source of the voices, their boots left behind in the doorway. 

Down the hall, the house opens up to a kitchen, their discoverer hovering lamely over a stove stacked high with pots, stirring at something that sloshes liquid in the pot bottom. Jaehyun glances around, tries to take in details in case this is some kind of trafficking den. Lord knows he’s pretty enough to be sold into prostitution, and he’s already got his suspicions about someone who’s willing to forgive an attempted car thief. The tiles beneath their feet are cracked, and the toes of his socks catch in the wear of the floor. He lifts his head, unsure, biting at the inside of his own cheek, crowding close to Doyoung should he need protecting. Not that he does, or ever has. The fucker is stronger than he looks, and Jaehyun’s got bruises to prove it.

There, seated at a rather cosy-looking breakfast nook, is a man, smoking a joint, a steaming mug sat in front of him. He’s got the twist between his lips, loosely, and for a moment Jaehyun is afraid he might drop it, burn this whole thing down or, worse yet, berate them for being the cause of his carelessness.

He spares Doyoung another glance, and catches a glimpse of the way Doyoung looks at this man, his dark hair, the way his lips curve into a smile when he doesn’t mean to be doing it. He looks at this man like every rebellion he’s ever tried and not gotten attention for, like he’s something in which Doyoung can at last rest his complicated dreams, his hopes for a short but impactful future. In his heart of hearts, Jaehyun knows everything he’s built this past year, through great effort and erasing whatever sense of identity he had when they first met, is over.

“Hey, are you the little bastards who broke my friend’s car?” asks the man at the bar, tipping his head and resting his cheek in his open palm. The joint ashes on the counter, and the other man, the one who’d caught them in the act, hastily wipes it away. 

“I wish you wouldn’t do that when we had company,” he tuts, but not in that uptight way that might make Jaehyun’s stomach clench, reminiscent of disapproving parents who’ll never quite _get_ where he’s coming from. 

“C’mere,” says the man, “I want to get a good look at the two of you.”

He inches forward, leaving Doyoung stranded in his tracks; he shuffles behind, on a delayed reaction, like he doesn’t remember how any part of himself works, and Jaehyun, for the record, feels more sorry for Doyoung than he does for himself. “It was me,” he confessed, much to both these men’s amusement. “I was the one who did all the work. Can my friend here go?”

His dad’s words play again in his head; Jaehyun shakes them away, bottom lip quivering just a touch, just enough that he feels more childish than he has his entire life. He’d do it for Doyoung, knowing full well the feeling isn’t reciprocated, and all he can think about is sacrifice, and what it will mean when the bars clink shut behind him, trapping him in a concrete room.

“Oh, no,” singsongs the first one, the witness to their crime, and he’s so… Jaehyun doesn’t get crushes on people just like that, has been dedicated to whatever this is with Doyoung, but there’s something knife-sharp about this man, the way he looks between their faces. “You were both in the car. One of you might have had more responsibility, but--”

“How long did it take you?” The smoking man lifts his head. “To get in. We weren’t gone very long.”

Jaehyun thinks about this in quiet. “Maybe a couple minutes,” he admits finally, bare hand coming up to guard his mouth, hide the prideful smile he displays for everyone and anyone present.

Doyoung comes up beside him. “I’m the one who taught him. We researched together.”

And the smoking man, he just laughs and laughs, eyes glazing over, face faintly red with the effort of choking down breath between hearty guffaws. “You’re, like, what, twelve? Both of you?”

“I’m seventeen,” mumbles Jaehyun, that same pride slipping down his throat, acidic and awful.

“That’s pretty young to be breaking into cars,” tuts the first one again, leaning against the counter. “What, you don’t think so? How long have you two even had to cultivate a life of crime? And no, wetting a diaper doesn’t count.”

This was, Jaehyun realises and not for the first time, a bad idea. “C’mon, Doyoung, we don’t need this,” he grumbles, taking his friend by the elbow.

But then he catches sight of Doyoung’s face, and there’s something glimmering in his eyes, something that evokes the memory of their first time kissing, alone in the car after Jaehyun’s first gig. He knows that, even if he were to leave, it would be alone, and that he can’t just abandon his best friend to men he barely knows, and that even if Doyoung would do it to him in a heartbeat, they’re different people.

He’s never noticed that before, that though they share one mind about their life of crime, they’re so _different_ it pains him to think of.

All at once, Jaehyun’s heart withers, and he takes a deep breath through his nose, tries to reinflate it. It stays beating, but his chest feels hard, stone, and he only snaps to in the last possible second.

“Do you two want a job?” asks the smoking man, and it almost feels like fate, that they’d pick the car of someone who is impressed by their shoddy, unpractised work. Jaehyun wants to say as much to Doyoung but it’s as if some huge rift has carved between them. “I promise I won’t take any of this to the cops, I think Taeil was just trying to scare you two into coming in.”

“Oh, I’ll take it to the cops,” says the second -- Taeil -- disappointment laced throughout his tone. “But only if you don’t want to work for us. We have a lot going on. I assume you both know how to drive?”

Jaehyun’s brand-new license still smells like the press from which it’d come, fresh lamination slick against his fingertips. It burns a hole in his wallet. “Yeah,” Doyoung answers first, and Jaehyun hums his agreement. “It’d be stupid to not be able to if we were, y’know, _stealing a car_.”

The as-yet-unnamed smoking man snorts. “Yeah, that makes sense.” There’s that same low glint in his eye that Doyoung’s got, and Jaehyun knows, just knows as he takes the cup offered him by Taeil, smelling of Christmas yet to come, that something is going to happen. His stomach is uneasy, even as he sips at the chocolate he’s been given, and his frayed nerves, still alight from the attempted carjacking. It’s so surreal that he should be full of hot cocoa, like a parent might serve him after a bad night; that his nose should be full of the smell of herb; that he should be anything remotely resembling comfortable.

Still, he settles in, because it’s offered him, and because this is the most at ease he’s been in months, probably since he and Doyoung started pulling jobs all over their hometown. If Taeil or his friend think anything strange of it, they don’t say, just sort of eye one another over the rims of their own drinks.

It’s going to be a long night, Jaehyun knows, but he’s ready for it, ready for anything -- especially ready to cut and run, should the need arise. He’s always been good at running, after all.

///

The smoking man, the one at whom Doyoung’s been making heart eyes for the last week, is named Johnny, and Johnny takes an immediate liking to the both of them. Jaehyun, for one, can’t truly vouch for whether or not this is a good thing, but it feels like it might be, at least at first.

Their new routine is this: they finish school at different times, meet up in a silent car, exchange vague pleasantries on the way to Taeil’s and Johnny’s shared criminal activity compound. It’s already come to replace their parties, their late-night ventures to their favourite pizza place, and any time they might have spent alone together. Jaehyun hates the change in routine, but then, he’s always been one to be suspicious of interruption. He knows this much about himself.

He doesn’t bring it up to Doyoung. It’d be stupid of him to try.

At their place, Johnny and Taeil give vague details about what they do. Jaehyun’s understanding comes to be that they take stolen cars, clean them entirely, give them new identities. A veritable witness protection for vehicles. They then take road trips, delivering the cars on their own to various contacts. They’re the people to go to for those who want to use cars for illegal purposes.

Jaehyun thinks it’s all a bit boring, but doesn’t say so. Crime is crime. He hears it in the back of his mind, in Doyoung’s voice rather than his own, and knows that though he might not be the most willing participant in this organisation, it’s better than the alternative.

In turn for his patience, Johnny teaches Jaehyun to make minor repairs on cars. The first thing, Jaehyun is mortified to find out, is to fix what he’d done to the car he’d tried to steal. “It goes beyond writing a note of apology,” says Johnny, and he smells of smoke and last night’s hangover. “Our customers--”

“Clients,” Taeil interjects, a bit unhappily, leaning against a toolbox with a steaming mug of coffee between his slightly-chapped hands. 

“Our _clients_ ,” amends Johnny, almost unnaturally smooth in the way he circles round the car to meet Jaehyun in the driver’s seat, “really like their purchases to arrive on time. It’s just business, you know? So you’re going to learn to fix what you fucked up.”

Jaehyun does not need a reminder that he’d fucked up. “And then?” he asks, chewing on his cheek. “It doesn’t make it not late.”

“If you do well, we’re going to have you take it to him.” Taeil, always right in turn, peers at Jaehyun through the windshield, amusement colouring his tone. He hasn’t moved an inch, and yet he seems to take up the entire room by virtue of his sheer presence. “You and Doyoung both.”

Well, that doesn’t sound ideal, considering the fact that they’ve not had an entire conversation in the last few days. It stands to reason that Taeil and Johnny have done these jobs together, taken road trips and gotten along just fine, and that prompts a question he can’t ask while Doyoung takes up space in the room, dicking around on his phone and not listening without being called on. Jaehyun saves it for later, tucked into the pocket of his jacket where he keeps a set of tools gifted him by Taeil, with kindness and something like love.

He’s never been given anything without expectation. Not even this counts since he’s been told he’ll be working with his hands a lot, but it’s a far cry from the expensive things his parents have been thrusting upon him since he was old enough to understand the value of them.

It's with tears in his eyes that he can't explain that he sets to do the work he's been asked to do. Johnny, in his gentleness, guides him the entire time, step by step, never once losing patience. Jaehyun, ever sceptical, thinks it must be because of whatever Johnny's got running through his veins, his flavour of the week that he's carrying around like saddlebags, his own personal equipment he uses to deal with life.

That's childish, and he knows it, chides himself for his poor attitude with an immediacy that startles him, but when he catches Doyoung staring with those lovesick eyes of his straight into the top of Johnny's head, it's worth it for the mental needle he gets to jab into Johnny's eye.

After all is said and done and Jaehyun has done what he can to repair the damage he's done, Johnny claps him on the back. "Good job," he says with an enthusiasm that catches Jaehyun by surprise. "Tomorrow we're going to work on the underneath, and then it should be ready to go where it's going."

The worst part, Jaehyun thinks, misery coursing through him like Johnny's drugs, is that it's so hard to hate Johnny when even through the haze of his probable substance use problem, he's so kind, so genuine, so _real_.

///

"Do you think they're going to let us deliver cars?"

The one sliver of normalcy that Doyoung and Jaehyun's routine has maintained is getting together on Saturday nights. Sure, it's not that far from the garage where Johnny and Taeil keep the cars waiting to be exported to their waiting clients, and sure, it's not the party that Jaehyun aches for, nor the kisses he feels he deserves for putting up with watching Doyoung fail at attempting to flirt his way into Johnny's good graces, but it's something.

They're on the roof of some abandoned apartment building, Doyoung having dared Jaehyun to come up here on a shaking ladder that had threatened to drop out directly from beneath when Jaehyun had managed to convince himself to put his full weight on it. The building isn't much better than its access, dilapidated, crumbling with every touch pressed to its brick exterior. Jaehyun won't admit it, never one to be outdone especially in feats of athleticism, but he's terrified that once they get up there the ladder will fall to the ground, too shaken by their combined weight as they'd ascended to relative godliness to make a second turn.

He can think of worse ways to die than stranded up here with his best friend, the only person he can honestly say he's ever loved without an ounce of selfishness.

He curls his hand around Doyoung's in the darkness, only to have it ripped away. Colouring, ashamed, Jaehyun inches away, just a fraction of distance, though it feels like miles when Doyoung is so close, but so distant. "I think if we ask for that kind of job..." He trails off mid-thought. "Do you think they've done that?"

"What, delivered cars together?" Doyoung snorts, passes the joint he's been chiefing for about eight thousand hits too long. Jaehyun takes it between his fingers and wonders if an indirect kiss is the last one he's going to get from Doyoung. It's petulant, but it's the only thing to which he can cling, right now. "Probably not. They're older. More experienced." He watches, delight clear in his grin, as Jaehyun blows a smoke ring out into the air. Jaehyun watches his profile in the moonlight, the way his expression contorts as he mulls over the question in his mind. "They probably do it separately, so they don't kill one another at the end of it all."

"That's dumb," and Jaehyun grins, the grip of the drug finally tightening around him, something like a hug he's never once received. "Why would they kill each other?"

Doyoung sits up for the sole purpose of giving him a look, significant of something that Jaehyun is simply too high to parse for himself. "It's hard to stay friends with someone when you're with them all the time," he deadpans.

At the very least Jaehyun manages to hear _that_ loud and clear, and though he doesn't like it, he accepts it, grimness to the tight line of his mouth.

Suddenly he doesn't feel like smoking anymore, even though he would have happily done so not but a few moments prior.

It occurs to him that Johnny does this, too, and it's with a startle that he decides he never wants to smoke again.

///

In the shop, he learns to change tires, air filters, oil. Johnny is there every step of the way, Taeil watching along with him, the both of them a pair of helicopter parents with no landing pad. Together the three of them work on cars that don't have buyers just yet. Johnny's quick to land a joke, and Jaehyun finds it harder to despise him with every passing moment they spend together.

Were he not already moon-eyed for Doyoung...

Taeil teaches more about shop maintenance -- kitty litter on oil spills, the importance of a well-organised shelf. It's interesting, to see the two of them work together, and it doesn't take much for Jaehyun to establish that they'd still work well together even if they spent too much time together. At the very least, that's one question answered, though Jaehyun's got a thousand more with which to bring himself up, should it kill him.

"Why don't you fix the cars?" Jaehyun asks Taeil on a sunny Sunday afternoon. They're restocking the shelves with essential: wiper fluid, transmission fluid, all sorts of things in all sorts of dangerous colours. "I mean, I don't know that I've seen you do anything like that, and I was just wondering...is there any particular reason?"

Taeil laughs, head tipped back so far Jaehyun's convinced he's going to snap his neck with the effort of it. "I _can_ do it," he says, all modesty, a grin still curling the corners of his mouth in a way that might be almost puppy-like. "I just don't really like to, uh, get my hands dirty, you know? I tend to forget what I'm doing, and get handprints all over things..."

He leaves it at that, and Jaehyun pieces together more things than he'd like.

"A question for a question, right?" And Taeil brings Jaehyun back to reality so quickly; he doesn't have an older brother, Jaehyun doesn't, but he imagines this is probably what it's like. "You got to ask one so I do?"

"Seems fair." Jaehyun shrugs, catches a bottle of oil that wobbles off the shelf with gravity's assistance, puts it back in its rightful place. "Shoot."

"Why do you always look so mad when you're here?" Nevermind, this is _exactly_ what Jaehyun thinks having a sibling might be like: presumptuous, taking of too many secrets too quickly, and too easy to do it. "I don't think you really are, because you wouldn't come back if you didn't feel like it."

"You literally blackmailed me," Jaehyun mutters darkly, following along and helping Taeil reach the higher shelves. "You said I was going to get arrested."

"What, rich thing like you, arrested?" Taeil snorts, all derision. It's a low blow, and Jaehyun has no choice but to take it. "Don't worry, your secret stays with me. I haven't even told Johnny yet. Unless you want me to?"

"No," Jaehyun insists, so swift it gives him whiplash. "I'd rather tell him whatever needs to be said to him about me myself."

"That's prideful of you," Taeil quips, and flashes some more of that enigmatic smile. "I won't tell him anything you don't want to know. But you haven't answered the question."

To be fair, Jaehyun feels as if he's answered at least three questions, but he goes along with it anyway. "I just... Do you ever feel like you're closer to someone than they think they are to you?"

"Oh, are you jealous?" Taeil crows. "That's so cute. Carry on, then. If you love him, he'll come back to you."

Jaehyun hasn't thought much about love in the way he's sure Taeil means it, that hand-holding jump into forever where you'll always forgive one another's mistakes and stay at the edge of eternity, indomitable. He's sure he's not qualified to consider it, his age and experience aside. Still, he thinks a moment about what that forever might be like with Doyoung by his side. Doyoung, who sets fire to feel joy, and who hangs his hat on whatever authority figure will have him. Doyoung, who touches like it would be painful not to and smiles like he's looking at sunshine for the first time. Doyoung, who scares and inspires Jaehyun in equal measure.

And he knows, just knows in the pit of his young soul, that he and Doyoung aren't meant for that kind of love.

So, in answer, he hums. "I don't think he will," he tells Taeil, nonchalance as they exit the seemingly endless rows of various essential parts, only to be greeted with Doyoung and Johnny talking, the both of them hunched over opposite sides of their project car's hood, their faces a mere couple inches apart.

"Then let him go," Taeil says, so sage that he might be far beyond the years he looks, ancient and unquestionable. "For both your sakes, let him live."

Jaehyun, for what it's worth, considers it, considers the implications of abandoning their friendship because he can't get what he wants. He's always been good at running, but for once, running away doesn't seem like the best option.

He goes to Doyoung's side, puts a hand on his shoulder, and for the first time in what seems like forever, Doyoung flashes him that sunshine smile.

Jaehyun's heart is at ease. He takes a breath. He smiles back.

**Author's Note:**

> as ever!:  
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> 
> come yell at me about all the writing i either am or am not doing!


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